Student engagement and motivation are a challenge for today s educators. Students consistently refer to the need for engaging pedagogy that is content driven, blended, appropriately challenging and designed in a way in which what is learnt and how it is applied can be readily determined. Students also demand a stimulating learning environment that gives them the opportunity to learn synchronous and asynchronously with their peers and prepares them for the workforce (Young, Klemz & Murphy, 2003).
One way to meet these student demands and build student engagement is through an online collaborative problem solving and writing assessment in a group wiki within the Blackboard LMS. Such an assessment has been offered in the first-year Marketing Principles unit since 2012. In a 12-week session, it commences with group formation by enrolment location in Week 3 and runs for six weeks until assessment due date at beginning of Week 9. In groups of two to four, students are charged with applying creative problem solving (CPS) to develop a new or improved sustainable market offering and to progressively apply other marketing concepts. Weighted at 35%, each group member needs to contribute substantively to the wiki content. A 10% minimum wiki contribution is required for a student to be eligible to earn the group mark. Students are encouraged to write in their wiki progressively.
A problem encountered in recent years with widening student participation (around 50% of students are with partner institutions) was late engagement with the wiki assessment. To incentivise students to engage earlier with their group wikis, two work-in-progress (WIP) bonus tasks were introduced in 2019. The first WIP task due in Week 5 involves each student contributing a draft CPS document to the wiki. The second WIP in Week 7 requires all group members to collaboratively create and draft the first five wiki pages of the assessment. Both tasks are assessed by the responsible tutor and provides constructive feedback to helps the group improve their wiki for the final assessment. An analysis of the WIP at Week 8 of Session 2 showed 77% of students had attempted one or both of the WIP tasks and achieved 25% to 100% of the bonus. All groups, which had attempted the WIP tasks, went on to attempt the final wiki assessment.
The group wiki builds student online engagement (as per Vivek, Beatty & Dalela, 2014) in three ways: (1) The two WIP tasks encourage students to direct their attention to commencing the assessment in a timely manner and to maintain attention; (2) enthused participation is encouraged by relating each week s learning materials to the assessment task both in lectures and in tutorials; (3) social connection (interaction with others) is developed by undertaking the online in groups.
Vivek, S. D., Beatty, S. E., Dalela, V., & Morgan, R. M. (2014). A generalized multidimensional scale for measuring customer engagement. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 22(4), 401 420.
Young, M. R., Klemz, B. R., & Murphy, J. W. (2003). Enhancing learning outcomes: The effects of instructional technology, learning styles, instructional methods and student behavior. Journal of Marketing Education, 25(2), 130 142.